Collateral Damage
Summary: Greg and Sara deal with the aftermaths of torture and sexual assault when a new criminal brings back old memories. Sequel to Slither but can be read independently.
Author's Note: While this is a sequel, it's fairly straight forward as a standalone. For more action, read Slither, for more angst, you've come to the right place.
Sara shined a flashlight down the manhole before covering her mouth and climbing down the ladder.
"Will you be OK down there?"
She rolled her eyes at Grissom's blatant concern and his underlying anxiety. "I'm fine!" she called up to him as she descended into to the sewers. She saw his head appear above her as she climbed down. Six months and he still wouldn't let her out of his sights. Sara shook her head. Normally, the argument was about who would stay above ground. Sara never thought she'd fight so hard for the right to spelunk the manmade tunnels of Las Vegas, but Grissom was still treating her like she was made of glass. Their argument had resulted in her shouting at him that she had half a mind to go get kidnapped again just to teach him a lesson. This had hurt him, visibly, and Sara was almost sorry for it, but she was frustrated. No matter how carefully he watched her, anything could happen. Even the best trained soldiers could trip over a plant root and crack their skull open without ever seeing battle.
So Grissom had relented and allowed Sara her adventure into the disgusting underbelly of the Las Vegas sewer system to retrieve a body some road workers had found down there earlier. Waving her flashlight around, she finally caught sight of a foot sticking out of the sewage and crouched down near it. She snapped a photograph and donned her gloves.
She lent over the edge, looking closer at the body, and noticed the parts that were visible didn't make sense, unless the body had a few broken bones. The leg (only one was visible) shot up straight out of the sewage like a flag pole at a ninety degree angle, but the arm was more awkward, sticking out at forty degrees, and facing away from Sara. Frowning, Sara grabbed the leg and pulled it toward her.
The arm didn't move.
Eventually, she found that she'd pulled the lower half of a male body out of the sludge, completely naked. She shivered as she fished out the arm, which she thanked God was attached to a torso, complete with head. The man had been severed clear through the stomach, but all other parts remained intact.
On a hunch, she walked down a ways, leaving the body behind, and knowing Grissom would lecture her for wandering away so far from her point of entry, and from him. But sure enough, she spotted them, also sticking out at odd angles. A hand. A toe. She photographed both and pulled them out and gasped to see that neither was connected to a leg or an arm. Unwilling to fish through the sewage and find more body parts on her own, Sara turned around and was about to call Grissom's name when she felt the cold steel barrel of a gun in the small of her back.
She had only one thought. Great. Grissom will never let me live this down.
She tried to control her breathing, but the image of Ryan Woodward's feral eyes came to mind and tears streamed down her face. "Woodward… please…" she begged. "Answer the phone…"
The gun pressed further into her back. "What phone? Nyet, you be quiet, I just wanted to tell you how pretty you looked in this light."
Sara shivered. For one, the veiled insult was offensive as they were standing in the near-darkness of a sewer tunnel, the reek of unprocessed waste invading their nostrils. For another, it reminded Sara even more stiffly of Woodward who, before he had shot her, had told her how much she reminded him of his first girlfriend. Sara always wondered what had happened to the poor girl.
"What do you want?" she was able to get out.
"I want you to leave those bodies alone," he cooed into her ear, "and come with me. I'll show you how it's done." His breath, for she could smell its stench even through the reek of excrement, was strong with cheap vodka. He pushed her to turn around and they began walking deeper into the sewers.
"Freeze." The voice was low and cold as it from behind them and Sara nearly melted at its sound. The gun clattered to the floor. Sara did not relax, not even when Grissom spoke again. "Sara, come over here."
She swallowed hard and stepped to the left, turning around. She refused to look at the man who threatened her, but could see his silhouette and his hands were in the air. Her eyes on the floor, she moved towards Grissom. She made a move to go past him, but he caught her arm with his free hand, still aiming his gun at her assailant.
"Who are you?" Grissom demanded in frigid tones.
The crook began to laugh. He spoke with a foreign accent. It was the first time he sounded like anyone other than the Texan Ryan Woodward to Sara. "My name is Aleksandr Rubinoff. Friends call me Sasha."
"Mr. Rubinoff," Grissom called. "I want you to slowly climb that ladder over there. My colleague will be waiting there to arrest you. Do you understand?"
Aleksandr Rubinoff smirked. "Yes, oh wise police person," he sneered with more than a hint of contempt. Slowly, he walked past Grissom, flashing a hungry look at Sara who cowered away from him. Grissom pulled Sara close to him and continued to aim his gun at Aleksandr Rubinoff's back as he climbed the ladder. Sara could see Brass's shoes standing outside of the manhole. Once the attacker was out of sight and Sara and Grissom heard the clatter of handcuffs, Grissom finally holstered his gun and turned to Sara, taking her firmly by both shoulders as he forced her to look at him.
"Do you see?" he said. "Never wander out of my sight like that, Sara."
In any other situation, she would have snapped back at his furious fear, but now, it simply reduced her to tears. She felt like a teenage girl who had been caught in a vicious lie by her worried father. Slowly, his anger with her dissolved and he wrapped his arms around her, hushing her as she wept.
She had promised herself six months ago that she would never again be a victim. She had intensified her self-defense training, and began working out every day. In addition to her gun, she carried a can of mace in her purse. But all of that was no match to a gun in her back, or in her gut for that matter, and the wound she had sustained in her stomach six months ago began to emanate a dull pain as she heaved sob after sob.
Grissom calmly stroke her hair as she clutched his shirt in her fists, angry with herself for breaking down like this in front of him. She'd never wept openly like this in front of him before. She had always trusted Grissom, but after Woodward, she had refused to continue to reach out to him. She had refused to reach out to anyone, in fact, and was perfectly content dealing with it on her own with her obsessive cleaning, until someone else reached out to her.
Sara vaguely thought that she was disappointed that it hadn't been Grissom. But he didn't know about the nightmares like Greg did. He didn't know about the screams that still echoed in her memory like a stereo blasting at full volume in the next room. And it wasn't Grissom's voice she heard but Greg's. His words played over and over again in her nightmares as Woodward violated her. They always sounded the same, always with ferocious intensity, but always meaningless in the end. I won't let him hurt you.
Contrarily, when Greg whispered a paraphrase of the words to her in her waking moments, when they lay together watching the sunset before going to work, they never ceased to calm her. I will never let anyone hurt you again.
They had never been more than friends, but Grissom's jealousy of their closeness, though minor, was still apparent, if only to Sara. He tried to mask it, and did it well in front of Greg, but when alone with Sara she saw the pain in his eyes. He wanted to be there for her like Greg was. He wanted to love her completely. And when there used to be a time when Sara might have let him, that time had come and passed.
She was damaged and confused and there were times when the only person in the world she was unafraid of was Greg Sanders. And their growing intimacy had been completely accidental. It wasn't like Sara had planned to get herself kidnapped with him. They suffered through a horrific and bloody event together, they were bound to have bonded. But Grissom acted as though Sara was pushing him away on purpose, and while that was somewhat true, Sara couldn't help herself. When he was finally trying to get close to her, she had stopped trying to get close to him.
Regardless of her misgivings, they were close now, at least physically, and Sara found that she didn't mind a bit. His embrace was warm and she found solace in it for the first time since the abduction. She let him hold her and almost wished he'd never let her go. And she knew that he wouldn't have either, not for a hundred years, if it weren't for the fact that they were standing underground in the Las Vegas sewer system. The thought disgusted her.
"Gil…" she whispered through her tears. "We should get back to work now."
"Are you ready?" he asked. "I mean, are you sure?"
Sara nodded and he kissed her hair before pulling away from her again. "We should keep processing the scene. Do our jobs."
Grissom agreed with a reassuring smile. "You're right," he said. "Of course, as usual."
She turned away from him and crouched near the male torso. She was shaking as she pushed the hair from his eyes. She felt Grissom's hand on her shoulder.
"I'll call Nick and Catherine in." He spoke softly, as though afraid that anything else would shatter her. "Let's go back."
Sara swallowed and nodded before rising to her feet and collecting her kit. Soon enough, they were going up the ladder into the familiar world above. She climbed up into the open air first, followed swiftly by Grissom. She rubbed her arms in the chilly night air as she waited. When he came up, he wrapped his arms around her from behind to warm her. She stiffened at his touch, reminded of Woodward holding a knife to her throat from behind, but as he kissed her cheek she relaxed slightly. She didn't much like being touched anymore by anyone, even Greg. While Greg seemed to acknowledge that, however, Grissom didn't seem to understand.
They drove back in silence. Grissom once mentioned that they'd each have to give a statement, and Sara just nodded in answer. Finally, Grissom spoke his mind.
"I'm scared for you, Sara."
"What do you mean?" she was genuinely confused at his words, though not particularly keen on discussing them.
"You refuse to see a psychiatrist," Grissom answered. "Even though Ecklie demanded it."
Sara looked at him in shock. "You lied for me," she whispered incredulously. "That's why he hasn't talked to me about it."
"Of course I lied for you," Grissom said quickly. "I don't want you to lose your job. I know you, Sara, you deal with things in your own way and your own time, but you have to realize that maybe Ecklie's advice wasn't so ill-intended. He's an asshole, and he wants to make sure no one sues us, but he's worried about you too."
"I can't talk to strangers like that, Grissom," Sara said. "You know that. You know me and strangers. The number of shrinks I ate up after my dad died, wow, I hated them so much. I have a pathological fear of psychiatrists, and the only people who are qualified to help me overcome that fear are psychiatrists. Frankly, though, it's not exactly a phobia that interferes with my everyday life, so I'm not too desperate to cure it."
Grissom nodded. "OK, I understand."
"You don't," Sara said flatly. "And not for lack of trying, either, but you just…"
"What are you trying to say here, Sara?" Grissom asked. "That I don't know you anymore?"
"I bet the thought has crossed your mind," Sara said. "I don't think that you think you know me anymore."
"Do I?" he asked.
Sara folded her arms in an unconscious defensive reaction. "I think you do. I think you try with all your heart to know me."
"Then why do you keep pushing me away?" he asked her.
"You hate talking about this kind of thing."
"I know I do," Grissom replied. "But these things… sometimes need to be talked about."
"Emotionless Gil Grissom wants to talk about feelings," Sara said snidely. "What a shock."
He stopped the car in the middle of a one-way street and looked at her as he blocked the road for a few angry drivers behind him. "I am not a corpse, Sara," he whispered calmly. "Just because I don't like to show it so often doesn't mean I don't have feelings. Is that what you think about me? Is that why you're pushing me away?"
"Grissom, start the car," Sara said, exasperated.
"No," Grissom said, his voice rising. "I love you, Sara. I trust you with all my heart. You used to trust me. What happened to that?"
Sara stared down at her knees. "I don't know, Gil…"
Grissom sighed and started to drive again. "I really wish you'd talk to me again, Sara. I'm… sorry, if I've done anything to upset you."
Sara shook her head. "You're just not good with people, Grissom. I know that."
"I'm good with you."
She looked up at him, but his eyes remained on the road. She thought of saying something, but didn't know what to say to him. So they sat in silence once more until they pulled up in front of the crime lab and slowly got out of the car.